[AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum on Allocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names - Deadline for comments extended

[Anne-Rachel Inné]

**ICANN is extending the comment period until 23:59 UTC 15 December
2007 on the forum for potential allocation methods for single-letter
and single-digit domain names at the second level in gTLD registries.
There has been interest in providing additional time so that members
of the Internet community that have not previously commented on ICANN
topics may do so. 17 comments have been provided to date.


On Oct 16, 2007 7:33 PM, Anne-Rachel Inné <annerachel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> ICANN Establishes Forum on Allocation Methods for Single-letter and
> Single-digit Domain Names
>
> 16 October 2007
>
> As recommended by the GNSO Council, ICANN is commencing a forum on potential
> allocation methods for single-letter and single-digit domain names at the
> second level in gTLD registries. Examples include a.com, i.info, 4.mobi,
> 8.org. Since revenue will result from this allocation, comments regarding
> the potential uses for this revenue are also requested.
>
> ICANN intends to synthesize responses to the forum and present proposed
> methods for allocation of single-letter and single-digit domain names at the
> second level for community consideration.
>
> To be considered by ICANN, ideas on potential allocation methods should be
> submitted no later than 23:59 UTC, 15 November 2007 to
> allocationmethods at icann.org. Comments may be viewed at
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/allocationmethods/.
>
> The GNSO Council asked ICANN to initiate a forum on this issue after
> considering a report of the Council's Reserved Names Working Group (RN-WG),
> which recommended that "single letters and digits be released at the second
> level in future gTLDs, and that those currently reserved in existing gTLDs
> should be released. This release should be contingent upon the use of
> appropriate allocation frameworks. More work may be needed. In future gTLDs
> we recommend that single letters and single digits be available at the
> second (and third level if applicable)." The GNSO is one of ICANN's primary
> stakeholder-populated policy making bodies. The recommendations of the RN-WG
> can be found at
> http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/final-report-rn-wg-23may07.pdf [PDF,
> 713K].
>
> Background
>
> Currently, all 16 gTLD registry agreements (.AERO, .ASIA, .BIZ, .CAT, .COM,
> .COOP, .INFO, .JOBS, .MOBI, .MUSEUM, .NAME, .NET, .ORG, .PRO, .TEL, and
> .TRAVEL) provide for the reservation of single-letter and single-digit names
> at the second level. ICANN's gTLD registry agreements contain the following
> provision on single-letter and single-digit names. See Appendix 6 of the
> .TEL Registry Agreement,
> http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/tel/appendix-6-07apr06.htm ("the
> following names shall be reserved at the second-level: All single-character
> labels.").
>
> Letters, numbers and the hyphen symbol are allowed within second level names
> in both top level and country code TLDs. Single letters and numbers also are
> allowed as IDNs -- as single-character Unicode renderings of ASCII
> compatible (ACE) forms of IDNA valid strings.
>
> Before the current reserved name policy was imposed in 1993, Jon Postel
> (under the IANA function) took steps to reserve all available single
> character letters and numbers at the second level for future extensibility
> of the Internet (see 20 May 1994 email from Jon Postel,
> http://ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/namedroppers.199x/msg01156.html). All
> but six (q.com, x.com, z.com, i.net, q.net, and x.org ) of the possible 144
> single letters or numbers at the second-level in .COM, .EDU, .NET and .ORG
> remain reserved by IANA. Those six registrations are an exception to the
> reservation practice. Under current practice, these names would be placed on
> reserve if the registrations were allowed to expire.
>
> The RN-WG carefully considered technical implications of releasing
> single-letter and single-digit domain names from reservation, and engaged in
> discussions with technical experts as the working group recommendations were
> being developed.
>
> There are currently 265 TLDs in the root zone (19 gTLDs and 246 ccTLDs).
> Although nearly all single-letter and single-digit domain names are reserved
> in gTLDs, 24% of ccTLDs (60) have at least one single-character name
> registration. According to IANA, out of 9540 possible combinations of
> single-character ASCII names (containing 26 letters, 10 numbers, but not
> symbols, across 265 TLDs), 1225 delegations of single-character ASCII names
> exist in the TLD zones (See
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-rn-wg/msg00039.html).
>
> ICANN has received many inquiries from third parties seeking to register
> single-letter and single-digit domain names, and has advised these parties
> that the names are reserved. Through the establishment of the public forum
> described above, ICANN is following its bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model
> to develop suitable allocation mechanisms for the release of single-letter
> and single-digit domain names as recommended by the GNSO working group.



-- 
Anne-Rachel Inne